Writing well is one of the most important skills you can develop to be successful in the business world. Over seventy companies and thirty thousand students--from professional writers to new employees to non-native English speakers to seasoned executives--have used the techniques in Business Writing to power their ability to communicate and launch their ideas. This course will teach you how to apply the top ten principles of good business writing to your work, how to deploy simple tools to dramatically improve your writing, and how to execute organization, structure, and revision to communicate more masterfully than ever. From the very first lesson, you'll be able to apply your new learning immediately to your work and improve your writing today. Your ideas are powerful. Learn how to deliver them with the clarity and impact they deserve.
Give your career the gift of Coursera Plus with $160 off, billed annually. Save today.
Business Writing
This course is part of multiple programs.
Instructor: Dr. Quentin McAndrew
191,889 already enrolled
Included with
(4,671 reviews)
What you'll learn
Write clearly and effectively.
Skills you'll gain
Details to know
Add to your LinkedIn profile
28 assignments
See how employees at top companies are mastering in-demand skills
Build your subject-matter expertise
- Learn new concepts from industry experts
- Gain a foundational understanding of a subject or tool
- Develop job-relevant skills with hands-on projects
- Earn a shareable career certificate
Earn a career certificate
Add this credential to your LinkedIn profile, resume, or CV
Share it on social media and in your performance review
There are 4 modules in this course
The first lesson in this module introduces the Effective Communication specialization, the capstone project, and the Business Writing course. You'll meet the writing instructor, Dr. Quentin McAndrew, and her counterparts Dave Underwood and Professor William Kuskin, who teach Graphic Design and Successful Presentation. Dave and William join Quentin to offer insights into how writing, design, and presentation relate to a process of continuous personal branding that we call Effective Communication. In this module, you'll discover the simple principles that inform all great business writing and that serve as the foundation of this course. These lessons set the stage for the deeper exploration and specific techniques that follow, not just in Business Writing, but in Graphic Design and Successful Presentation as well. Let's get started!
What's included
13 videos7 readings4 assignments3 discussion prompts
Did you know that the most important element of good writing isn't good writing? It's good organization. If you haven't organized your documents for maximum effectiveness, you've wasted an opportunity to present your ideas--and yourself--with power. This module teaches you the universal organizational formula that allows you to optimize your business writing. You'll understand how the principles you learned in Module One build to this formula, and you'll see how a scaffold gets created and applied to a real business document. By the end of this module, you'll be able to wield your organizational knowledge in service of your ideas and personal brand, and you'll have built the foundation that allows you to generate powerful sentences in Module Three.
What's included
9 videos2 readings4 assignments2 discussion prompts
In the first lesson of Module Three, we'll apply our writing principles and our scaffold to creating an actual memo. You'll see, step-by-step, how the scaffold guides the writing process to make it easier to create a forceful business document. You'll understand how to apply the scaffold to guide sentence and paragraph creation, and you'll have a chance to test and reinforce your new skills. The second lesson covers common grammatical errors that sap many writers' professional brands. Short videos explain each error, why each hurts your clarity, and how to correct your writing--even if you don't remember the grammar rule. You'll understand why these changes are important to your goal of Effective Communication and why it's important to eliminate these common missteps from your own writing.
What's included
15 videos12 assignments2 peer reviews
So, you've started to write a document . . . Module Four takes you beyond the scaffold and good grammar to provide you with specific tips that will elevate your language, infuse your writing with clarity, and amp up your ability to communicate your ideas effectively. Every lesson in this module is based on the principles you learned in Module One, and they form a checklist of techniques that you can apply to any business document to insure your ideas shine on the page. Short videos on emails and longer documents give you simple techniques for applying the lessons of this course to a broad range of your work.
What's included
15 videos1 reading8 assignments2 discussion prompts
Instructor
Offered by
Recommended if you're interested in Business Essentials
University of Glasgow
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
University of California, Irvine
Why people choose Coursera for their career
Learner reviews
Showing 3 of 4671
4,671 reviews
- 5 stars
81.66%
- 4 stars
15.44%
- 3 stars
1.92%
- 2 stars
0.47%
- 1 star
0.49%
New to Business Essentials? Start here.
Open new doors with Coursera Plus
Unlimited access to 7,000+ world-class courses, hands-on projects, and job-ready certificate programs - all included in your subscription
Advance your career with an online degree
Earn a degree from world-class universities - 100% online
Join over 3,400 global companies that choose Coursera for Business
Upskill your employees to excel in the digital economy
Frequently asked questions
A word processing program, like Microsoft Word, will be helpful for completing this course.
Access to lectures and assignments depends on your type of enrollment. If you take a course in audit mode, you will be able to see most course materials for free. To access graded assignments and to earn a Certificate, you will need to purchase the Certificate experience, during or after your audit. If you don't see the audit option:
The course may not offer an audit option. You can try a Free Trial instead, or apply for Financial Aid.
The course may offer 'Full Course, No Certificate' instead. This option lets you see all course materials, submit required assessments, and get a final grade. This also means that you will not be able to purchase a Certificate experience.
When you enroll in the course, you get access to all of the courses in the Specialization, and you earn a certificate when you complete the work. Your electronic Certificate will be added to your Accomplishments page - from there, you can print your Certificate or add it to your LinkedIn profile. If you only want to read and view the course content, you can audit the course for free.